Filtering the Internet?  The Pro’s and Con’s of it all…

Pro's Con's
 

 

 

 

 

 

·        Children may search (intentionally or not) certain terms on the internet and find themselves trapped in a maze of indecent or pornographic sites. 

 

·        Many popular terms (such as video games and toys) will lead unsuspecting children to pornography sites.

 

 

·        Pornography site creators will often buy domain names that can often be confused with legitimate organizations. Take, for example, whitehouse.org or whitehouse.gov.

 

·        Certain spam will automatically link or open a pornographic site.  Unknowing, a child may easily open his email and find himself thrown into a pornographic site. 

 

·        Many children are naturally curious and may voluntarily search these sites.  Once a pornography or indecent site is opened, it is very difficult to get it out of the computer’s “memory.”

 
 
 


·                       A person cannot get a list of sites that are blocked by a particular program.  Even if the program does come with a list, it is encrypted and unreadable to the user.

 

·                       Many blocking program creators do not review websites personally and are therefore continually switching what is and what is not blocked. 

 

 

·                       This creates a need to continually update the filtering program to the latest version.  This can be ineffective as far as time and expense.

 

·                       Keyword blocking is difficult, if not impossible, because software companies block according to URLs and keywords within the page.  If the keyword block is turned on, then “valid” sites may become blocked when unnecessary.        

 

 

·                        There is no 100% guarantee for any filtering system.  Either a person loses valuable sites due to his filter, or possibly exposes a minor to an indecent site because the filtering system “missed” it.